“Yeah, but you wouldn’t be in London.”

  “True, true.”

  Gretel’s doing well. I can feel she’s doing well. Julia has already nodded at Joshua when she didn’t realize I was looking.

  I tune out whenever they drift into nostalgia I can’t join in with and busy my brain with reliving the boxing. Punch punch, kick kick kick. I want time to hurry up so I can go back and do it all over again. I don’t think I’ve stopped grinning since I left, and it’s contagious. The table smile with me, reflect it back, catch my happiness like a summer cold.

  Eventually a waiter approaches the table with a bill. He’s sorry but they need the table now for the next booking. The air ripples with mild annoyance, no one wanting to leave the sanctuary of the table. Neil’s eyes flick to the queue below us, as if he’s trying to make out the group who dares expel us. He then picks up the bill and takes charge, calculating the amount we all owe.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll get it,” Joshua says to me as I’m rifling through my purse for my card and praying I’ve got enough to cover it. I can’t afford to be as independent a Gretel as I want to be right now.

  “Thank you.”

  “I’m the one who asked you to come.” He pulls me in to kiss me on the cheek. “They like you, I can tell,” he murmurs, the smell of beer on his warm breath.

  “I like them too.” It’s true enough. I certainly don’t dislike them. They’re just like any other group of uni people who have all ended up in London, glad to have ties and roots in this relentlessly lonely city. Neil’s a bit of a dick but every friendship group has a bit of a dick that only an outsider can pick up on. We wait impatiently as the waiter hurries through all our respective card payments, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. “It’s started to rain,” he announces to no one in particular and nobody really takes it in. We’re all too busy collecting our bags and figuring out where to go next.

  Neil decides it’s best to stay here. “There’s a nice bar on the lower ground floor.” His word is decision. We nod and clatter downstairs, walking through clouds of various aromas from different dishes carried past. My phone has a notification on it, telling me I’ve been added to a group chat called “Better Out Than In” and my smile settles into my stomach.

  “You staying at mine later?” Joshua asks, lips brushing my neck.

  “If you want me to?” Gretel says, looking right at him innocently as we reach the ground floor. A grab of my arse indicates he does.

  The bar’s crowded but dying down enough that we’re able to cram ourselves onto a circular table.

  “Right. Shots! Shots?” Neil says and everyone groans but accepts the challenge. He returns shortly with a tray of tequila and limes, and good old Gretel downs hers effortlessly, licking the salt and munching the citrus, the very definition of fun fun fun—aren’t I such fucking fun?

  We order more cocktails. I’m able to afford a round as Joshua paid for my meal. It costs seventy pounds. I check my phone while I wait for the cocktails to be made.

  Better Out Than In

  Charlotte: Welcome to the group, April! How are those endorphins treating you?

  April: WHY DOESN’T LIFE ALWAYS FEEL THIS WAY?

  Hazel: We have a convert.

  Hazel: Oh my God, my butt.

  Hazel: Why did I kick so very hard? Must. Stop. Imagining. His. Face.

  Charlotte: The whole point is to imagine his face.

  Hazel: Shouldn’t I be over it by now?

  Charlotte: Yes, set a time limit on your trauma recovery. Very helpful.

  I wish I didn’t have to return to the table. I’d rather go home, shower properly, get into my pajamas and spend all night sending messages to these women. I contemplate just leaving—vanishing—once again thinking I should just end whatever the hell this mess is that I’ve started. The need for revenge has quietened since just one boxing class. Carol must really be on to something. Yet I find myself staying put and carrying the tray of drinks back from the bar. “Ta-daaa!” I say, plonking the tray down. Everyone thanks me, plucking their drinks off it, before returning their attention to Neil who’s waxing lyrical about something or other. I settle next to Josh, who pats my knee, and take a sip of my drink.

  I’m a little bit more than tipsy actually and finding it hard to sit up straight on my stool. I try to tune back into the group’s frequency—leaning forward to hear what Neil’s saying.

  “Did you see it in the news? It’s getting ridiculous. You can’t say anything if you’re a man these days. It’s a complete witch hunt.”

  My ears prickle. I sit up a bit straighter. I turn to Joshua who’s holding his head up with bunched fists under his chin. He’s blinking blearily, but nodding.

  “I loved him in Under the Apple Tree,” Julia adds. “And he’s such a nice man. He’s clearly so in love with his wife.”

  A very determined chill settles across my skin as I realize who and what they’re talking about. I’ve been trying to avoid it in the news but it’s almost impossible. It’s everywhere. A famous actor’s been saying that the sexism backlash in Hollywood has gone too far. That some women have overreacted to minor incidents and the climate of fear is affecting how films are made. The phrase he’s coined that’s caused all the upset is “rape spectrum.”

  “I mean, I totally agree with what he’s saying. Why is there such a backlash?” Neil continues. He leans forward, his strong arms bulging out as he re-postures. He speaks with the confidence of someone who’s never feared for his safety before.

  The table nod their heads heavily, giving him further confidence to continue as my stomach curdles with newly arrived bile. “Having your arse pinched is not the same as being, like, violently raped.” He throws his hands up. “Where’s the controversy?”

  My feet are on the ground because I’m standing up. I didn’t mean to stand up, but it appears to be happening. My mouth is open, with words tumbling out of it.

  “Pray tell me,” I’m saying, loudly, sourly, “what a non-violent rape is please, Neil? I’d love to hear.”

  The energy switches within a millisecond. The table falls quiet. Mouths drop open. A tightness encompasses the group. Portcullises shut down. Neil and I size each other up and I put on a smile, like I’m asking the question innocently. A child who doesn’t know the answer: “What does Santa Claus do in the summertime? Why can’t I go to bed as late as I want? Why do I have to eat my main course before I’m allowed my pudding? What’s a non-violent rape? Can I have a cookie?”

  Joshua stiffens next to me. He and Neil share the smallest of looks. My malfunction is loud and aggressive and inappropriate and ruining everything. I should be panicking now. Trying to stuff myself back into my box, folding in my limbs like a rag doll at the end of her children’s TV show. Quietening myself, making it easy, smiling and nodding because it will make for an easier hour now, even though I won’t be able to sleep for the rage I’ll feel later. Gretel would laugh it off. Gretel would know maybe it’s not the time or place. And Gretel could handle this conversation anyway, without it setting off a thousand tiny landmines in her perfect trauma-free body. But April is too full from her class to back down. I can’t let this slide, not when I feel totally able to take him on.

  Neil turns so he’s fully facing me while the rest watch our stand-off. “I didn’t mean it like that.” He may as well be holding his hands up and stepping away from his weapon. “I’m just saying, there is a spectrum to these things. You can’t lump in something like pinching an arse with something more damaging. That’s all he was trying to say, and I don’t think that’s an unfair argument.” He sits back, puffing his chest, spraying his alpha scent over me like a skunk that’s been stamped on.

  “And you get to decide what’s damaging and what isn’t?” I ask. “You don’t see a problem with a man who probably hasn’t ever been violated getting to decide what counts as a violation? You don’t see the problem with even measuring a violation in the first place?” I shake my head, like he’s being stupid, because he is. “It’s the violation that’s the violence, don’t you see? It’s knowing your boundaries mean bugger-all that’s the trauma—that anyone can touch you, that how you feel about it doesn’t count. That’s the trauma. That’s the violence. Anything else that happens on top of that is additional.” I’m darting my finger at him. The table looks utterly horrified. Neil’s doing his best not to snarl. “It’s not a spectrum,” I continue. “It’s a line that shouldn’t be crossed. Ever. In any way. It’s all violence and it’s all traumatic. And, for someone who clearly has no experience of it, why do you feel like you’re the one who gets to decide?”

  Neil’s wife has got the alert. Husband under attack! Husband under attack! Must protect, must do my duty. Julia jumps in while I’m pausing for angry breath. She must defend her husband. “I don’t think that’s what he was saying...”

  “What are you saying then?” I ask Neil, but now Joshua’s bumbling in.

  “Let’s change the subject,” he says brightly, lifting his beer to his mouth. “No politics on a Friday night, eh?”

  I twist to him and shake my head, stupefied. “This isn’t politics, Joshua, it’s women’s fucking lives.”

  There’s a collective flinch at the table. A stadium wave of friction to my inappropriate swearing.

  “Hey, hey, hey,” Lucy’s saying, trying to keep the peace.

  “If we could all take a minute maybe, to calm down,” Luke suggests.

  Nobody’s having fun all of a sudden and it’s all April’s fault. I’m breaking the rules. I don’t even care. I’m so bored of this sort of bullshit and I’ve finally got the confidence to say as much.

  Joshua is po-faced. His voice soft. “Gretel, I didn’t mean it like that. I just—”

  “I’m really sorry, but I have to go.” I don’t care that I’ve made it awkward, and I don’t care that they’re all going to bitch about me, and right now I don’t even care that I’ve messed up my weird social experiment with Joshua. This is the time to end it, like this. With April’s energy soaring through my veins, finally having her say, revealing that even Gretel has some fucking limits. All I care about is leaving this table. Leaving this debate about something that is too painful to be debated.

  “Gretel!”

  “Sorry, it’s just, I’ve got this thing, early tomorrow.”

  I’m still making a polite escape considering everything. I’m letting the side down by not just storming out. My urge to be likeable, even when storming out of a curry house, still wins. “It was lovely to meet you all,” I pretend.

  We even all kiss each other on the cheek before leaving. They tell me it was nice to meet me too. Joshua’s eyes are wide with drunken confusion. I kiss him on the cheek the same way I’d kiss my grandma. “Bye babes,” I say, then I walk out of his life.

  I practically run up the stairs. If I don’t get out of this stuffy air, I will suffocate. I push past waiters and around tables of people eating. The concierge wishes me a good evening but I hardly hear him. I’m through the doors and outside, and yes yes yes, it’s raining! It’s finally raining! Sheets of it plummet from the sky, drenching me within seconds. I stop and stand in it for a moment, not quite believing it. I’m not the only one in wonder. Soon there are several of us standing there on the gray slippery pavement of Granary Square, staring upward, our arms outstretched, like we’re in rapture. I throw my head back, open my mouth, and let the polluted raindrops fall onto my tongue. I will never see that table of humans again and they all hate me, but I could not care less. Gretel is gone, it’s over. It wasn’t quite the grand finale I wanted it to be, but I’ve still ended it. In fact, it’s even better this way. Because I ended it while standing up for myself. In this moment I’m everything I want to be. Strong, alive, not taking any more shit. In this moment I’m invincible. I never want it to stop raining.

  I duck into the Tube, shaking myself dry like a dog. My dress clings to my body, my feet slip in my sandals, my lungs feel clean from all the extra oxygen in the air. I don’t let myself think about it as the train rumbles through the darkness, its damp passengers dripping onto the filthy floors. I’m not ready to unpack the emotions, the fallout. I just want to feel good that it’s finally raining, that I made some new friends earlier, that I stood up for something I believed in even though it was the harder thing to do.

  It’s still pissing it down when I get out at South Kensington. I have no umbrella. I’ve forgotten what it feels like to even consider taking one out. So I walk home with the fat rain splashing my eyelashes, taking it slowly as people dart past me, Evening Standards held uselessly above their heads. I savor each step. I know things will get complicated once I’m inside and fully alone. So slowly I go, skin soaked and puckering, jaw chattering from the damp, unable to hear the noise of the city over the din of so much water falling from above and the low rumbling of thunder.

  The flat is empty, once again. Megan merely a passing ghost these days. I stand dripping onto the wooden floorboards, laughing at how drenched I am. I peel my clothes off and carry the dripping bundle to the bathroom sink. I get my towel and rub myself vigorously, squeezing my hair until it doesn’t drip anymore. Then I wrap myself up like a burrito and walk back out into the sitting room.

  I thought I would cry when I got in, but instead I just feel the vague sting of self-righteousness, burning gently like the first day of cystitis. I’m not embarrassed or ashamed that I stood up to that man, that I made the conversation difficult for him, although I do feel a tiny pang for Josh, and his embarrassment at my behavior. I expect he’ll call tomorrow, probably, after he’s cooled down. He’ll ask to meet for coffee and then make an excuse about why he doesn’t think we should see one another anymore. His friends are probably going through his escape plan right now, reassuring him he’s making the right decision. Maybe he isn’t ready to date again after that last one, the girl he lived with. I pull up my phone to see the group chat’s been busy.

  Better Out Than In

  Hazel: How am I drunk after two glasses of wine? Why does this always happen to me? Especially when I see you lot?

  Steph: Because we’re amazing.

  Hazel: I mean, apart from that...

  I wish I’d stayed with them. I should’ve. Why did I even go and meet Josh’s friends? Considering I have no interest in him whatsoever, why did I put that above my healing and recovery?

  My phone rings in my hand, and my eyebrows furrow in utter shock when I see it’s Josh’s number. It takes three tries to accept the call as my fingers are still wet from the shower.

  “Hi Gretel.” I can hardly hear him over the roar of the storm. “Whereabouts in South Ken do you live? I’m at the Tube station.”

  “You’re where?”

  “Are you OK?”

  “You’re at the Tube station?”

  “Yes, but I don’t know where to go next. Is it OK to come round?”

  “It’s pissing it down! Aren’t you soaked?”

  “Yes. Look, I’m sorry about what happened. Can you just give me your address and we can chat about it?”

  I’m too shocked to do anything other than give it to him.

  Unsure how to proceed next, I perch on the sofa, staring at the wall until the urgent trill of my buzzer makes me jump. I open the door, still wrapped in my towel.

  Joshua looks like he’s just clambered out of a swimming pool. His mouth is set in a thin line. “Hi,” he says nervously, running a hand through his hair and dislodging a hidden tidal wave of water. “Can I come in?”

  I step to one side and close the door after him. “You’re drenched, I’ll get you a towel.”

  “Thank you. That would be great.”

  He’s balancing on one leg to take off his shoe, dripping more rain onto the floorboards, when I come back with a dry towel.

  He takes it wordlessly and rubs his face into it. “Do you mind if I take my clothes off? Not like that...it’s just, I really am soaked.”

  “No, that’s fine. The bathroom is through there.”

  I sit on the arm of the sofa again and it occurs to me that I should probably get dressed while he’s in there, but I don’t seem able to move. The noise of the storm pushes out most of my thoughts. The floor creaks and I look up. Joshua is back, also wrapped in a towel, like we’re on a couples spa holiday.

  “I’ve never been to your flat before.” He’s looking around, digesting it. I’ve not had any time to Gretel it up in any way. It’s just my home. April’s. With the giant framed picture of Dawson crying that I got Megan for her thirtieth hanging over the sofa. The unwashed plates from this morning’s breakfast festering in the sink. The general mess caused by being signed off work for a week for stress.

  “Here it is.”

  “Your flatmate not in?”

  “No.”

  Silence approaches and stays put. I’m not particularly in the mood to be the one to break it. I’m still angry. Joshua shuffles over in his towel and lays a hand on my shoulder. I look up.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, like he might mean it, adding to my surprise. “I’m not sure what happened back there.”

  “Your friend was implying there’s a rape spectrum...”

  “Well that’s not exactly what he was...” He sees my face. “He’s a really nice guy. There’s no way he meant it the way you took it.”

  “If you came over to defend him then you may as well leave. I know he’s your friend, but this is my job, Joshua,” I say. “I deal with girls who have been victims of that all day every day. If you had any idea, any, of the damage it causes, the pain, the confusion, the ripples of shit...”

  What I don’t say is, “and I was raped. Me. Me! And it is something I can never take away. It’s something that will never not hurt whenever I think about it. It’s something I didn’t deserve or ask for and ouch it hurts, so much. Do you have any idea what it’s like to have someone fucking DEBATE your entitlement to pain? I WAS RAPED, OK?” I don’t know why I don’t say it, but I don’t.